Honorable Opponent Read online

  The captain caught up with them just short of the tent.

  "Everything all set, sir," Corporal Conrad reported in a whisper.

  "Fine," the general said.

  They reached the tent and went inside. The general opened a refrigerating unit and took out a gallon jug.

  "This," he explained, "is a drink we made for your compatriot. He found it very tasty."

  He set out glasses and sipping straws and uncorked the jug, wishing he could somehow hold his nose, for the drink smelled like something that had been dead too long. He didn't even like to guess what might have gone into it. The chemists back on Earth had whomped it up for the captive Flyer, who had consumed gallon after gallon of it with disconcerting gusto.

  The general filled the glasses and the Flyers picked them up in their tentacles and stuck the straws into their draw-string mouths. They drank and rolled their eyes in appreciation.

  The general took the glass of liquor the captain handed him and gulped half of it in haste. The tent was getting just a little thick. What things a man goes through, he thought, to serve his planets and his peoples.

  He watched the Flyers drinking and wondered what they might have up their sleeves.

  Talk, the spokesman had told him, and that might mean almost anything. It might mean a reopening of negotiations or it might be nothing but a stall.

  And if it was negotiation, Earth was across the barrel. For there was nothing he could do but negotiate. Earth's fleet was crippled and the Flyers had the weapon and a renewal of the war was unthinkable. Earth needed five years at the minimum and ten years would be still better.

  And if it was attack, if this planet was a trap, there was only one thing he could do—stand and fight as best he could, thoroughly suicidal course.

  Either way, Earth lost, the general realized.

  The Flyers put down their glasses and he filled them up again.

  "You do well," one of the Flyers said. "You got the paper and the marker?"

  "Marker?" the general asked.

  "He means a pencil," said the captain.

  "Oh, yes. Right here." The general reached for a pad of paper and a pencil and laid them on the desk.

  One of the Flyers set down his glass and, picking up the pencil, started to make a laborious drawing. He looked for all the world like a five-year-old printing his first alphabet.

  They waited while the Flyer drew. Finally he was finished. He laid the pencil down and pointed to the wiggly lines. "Us," he said. He pointed to the sawtooth lines. "You," he told the general.

  The general bent above the paper, trying to make out what the Flyer had put down.

  "Sir," the captain said, "it looks like a baffle diagram."

  "Is," said the Flyer proudly.

  He picked the pencil up. "Look," he said. He drew directional lines and made a funny kind of symbol for the points of contact and made crosses for the sections where the battle lines were broken. When he was done, the Earth fleet had been shattered and sliced into three segments and was in headlong flight.

  "That," the general said, with the husk of anger rising in his throat, "was the engagement in Sector 17. Half of our Fifth Squadron was wiped out that day."

  "Small error," said the Flyer and made a deprecatory gesture. He ripped the sheet of paper off the pad and tossed it on the floor. He laboriously drew the diagram again. "Attend," he said.

  The Flyer drew the directional lines again, but this time he changed them slightly. Now the Earth line pivoted and broke and became two parallel lines that flanked the Flyer drive and turned and blunted it and scattered it in space. The Flyer laid the pencil down. "Small matter," he informed the general and the captain. "You good. You make one thin mistake."

  Holding himself sternly in hand, the general filled the glasses once again. What are they getting at, he thought. Why don't they come flat out and say it?

  "So best," one of the Flyers said, lifting his glass to let them know that he meant the drink.

  "More?" asked the Flyer tactician, picking up the pencil.

  "Please," said the general, seething.

  He walked to the tent flap and looked outside. The men were at the guns. Thin wisps of vapour curled from the ship's launching tubes; in just a little while, it would be set to go, should the need arise. The camp was quiet and tense.

  He went back to the desk and watched as the Flyer went on with tactics. "Interesting?" he piped enthusiastically.

  "I find it so," the general said. "There is just one question."

  "Ask," the Flyer invited.

  "If we should go to war again, how can you be sure we won't use all of this against you?"

  "But fine," the Flyer enthused warmly. "Exactly as we want."

  "You fight fine," another Flyer said. "But just too slightly hard. Next time, you able to do much better."

  "Hard!" the general raged.

  "Too roughly, sir. No need to make the ship go poof."

  Outside the tent, a gun cut loose and then another one and above the hammering of the guns came the full-throated, ground-shaking roar of many ship motors.

  The general leaped for the entrance, went through it at a run, not bothering with the flap. His cap fell off and he staggered out, thrown slightly off his balance. He jerked up his head and saw them coming in, squadron after squadron, painting the darkness with the flare of tubes.

  "Stop firing!" he shouted. "You crazy fools, stop firing!"

  But there was no need of shouting, for the guns had fallen silent.

  The ships came down toward the camp in perfect flight formation. They swept across it and the thunder of their motors seemed to lift it for a moment and give it a mighty shake. Then they were climbing, rank on serried rank, still with drill precision—climbing and jockeying into position for regulation landing.

  The general stood like a frozen man, with the wind ruffling his iron-grey hair, with a lump, half pride, half thankfulness, rising in his throat.

  Something touched his elbow.

  "Prisoners," said the Flyer. "I told you by and by."

  The general tried to speak, but the lump was there to stop him. He swallowed it and tried once again. "We didn't understand," he said.

  "You did not have a taker," said the Flyer. "That why fight so rough."

  "We couldn't help it," the general told him. "We didn't know. We never fought this way before."

  "We give you takers," said the Flyer. "Next time, we play it right. You do much better with the takers. It easier for us."

  No wonder, the general thought, they didn't know about an armistice. No wonder they were confused about the negotiations and the prisoner exchange. Negotiations are not customarily needed to hand back the pieces one had won in a game.

  And no wonder those other races had viewed with scorn and loathing Earth's proposal to gang up on the Flyers.

  "An unsporting thing to do," the general said aloud. "They could have told us. Or maybe they were so used to it."

  And now he understood why the Flyers had picked this planet. There had to be a place where all the ships could land.

  He stood and watched the landing ships mushing down upon the rock in clouds of pinkish flame. He tried to count them, but he became confused, although he knew every ship Earth had lost would be accounted for.

  "We give you takers," said the Flyer. "We teach you how to use. They easy operate. They never hurt people or ships."

  And there was more to it, the general told himself, than just a silly game—though maybe not so silly, once one understood the history and the cultural background and the philosophic concepts that were tied into it. And this much one could say for it: It was better than fighting actual wars.

  But with the takers, there would be an end of war. What little war was left would be ended once and for all. No longer would an enemy need to be defeated; he could be simply taken. No longer would there be years of guerrilla fighting on newly settled planets; the aborigines could be picked up and deposited in cultural reservations an
d the dangerous fauna shunted into zoos.

  "We fight again?" the Flyer asked with some anxiety.

  "Certainly," said the general. "Any time you say. Are we really as good as you claim?"

  "You not so hot," the Flyer admitted with disarming candour. "But you the best we ever find. Play plenty, you get better."

  The general grinned. Just like the sergeant and the captain and their eternal chess, he thought.

  He turned and tapped the Flyer on the shoulder.

  "Let's get back," he said. "There's still some drinking in that jug. We mustn't let it go to waste."

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